Okay, this is the third or fourth post that I've written for today. I keep changing my mind which one to post. Since it's the day before Christmas, maybe I should get into the whole "peace on earth and goodwill towards men" thing and just skip Monday Morons this week.
On the other hand, I just remembered something that has to do with Christmas, so here goes....
As some of you may know, I do not drink alcohol. Or, at least, I do not consume much alcohol, and most of that has been cooked. I've had beer cheese soup and beer bread and the occasional fish with wine sauce and stuff like that. Maybe when I was younger I had some prescription cough syrup that contained alcohol, but I don't remember.
I was once introduced at a party as "that girl who won't drink NyQuil."
Anyway, I don't think that drinkable alcohol should be available over the counter like that. If you need a drug, go see a doctor. I don't think that it's fair that people can legally go out and drink and such and there's nothing you can do to stop people from doing that and follow up with any number of stupid things. People are sold useless alcohol when it's pretty obvious that they're going to end up hurting or even killing someone. On the other hand, if you want to buy antibiotics for a painful UTI, that's too bad. You want antibiotics, you have to go to a doctor first, and if you don't go see a doctor the people in the drug store will let you suffer and possibly die. But in that same store you can buy as much alcohol as you want as long as you have ID.
The whole drinking alcohol thing is stupid anyway, even if it didn't hurt and kill people. If you're not any fun to begin with, the alcohol isn't going to change that. You'll never be as funny as me, so just accept that fact and get on with your life. The alcohol will not make you as funny as me, it will just dull your senses until you imagine that you're as funny as me. Those of us who stayed sober just watched you do something really stupid. We're laughing at you, not with you.
Where was I?
So I don't drink alcohol and everyone who's paid an attention knows that I don't drink alcohol. I do like a few things that other more strict people think are recreational drugs--caffeine, chocolate, and sugar. I am quite sure that I consume more of those things than is good for me. But so far it hasn't made me do anything stupid (in front of other people) or caused me to hurt someone or hit someone with the car, etc....
I enjoy a number of non-alcoholic drinks and a variety of foods. My husband also enjoys food. And if you're supposed to get me and/or my husband a gift, things that have to do with food are usually a good idea. Gift cards to restaurants, coupons books and/or calendars, homemade goodies, and gift baskets from Hickory Farms and such are all things that we appreciate.
One year my employer gave me a gift basket and a bottle of champagne. It wasn't like they specifically went out and bought that for me, just that everyone at the place received an almost identical gift basket with champagne. I mentioned that if I was still there the next Christmas (which I was not) I would prefer the less expensive non-alcoholic bubbly or maybe some bubble bath that just looks like champagne. I think I ended up cooking some fish in it and maybe attempted to make some candy with some of it. I'm sure a lot of it went to waste, cause I wouldn't drink any of it and I certainly wouldn't let anyone else drink it either.
So very often for Christmas, someone gets us an assortment of cheeses and a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling grape juice or cider or pear or something that looks like wine or champagne. We like that sort of thing, and before I joined the club we usually spent New Year's Eve at home, undressed, eating the cheese assortment and drinking the non-alcoholic whatever.
One year when we unwrapped the bottle of non-alcoholic whatever it was, someone joked about the bottle, maybe saying that someone was too cheap to get us the real stuff. I don't remember exactly what the joke was, just that it was funny at the time cause everyone there knew that I didn't drink alcohol.
So the next year someone gave me real champagne. This was someone who not only knows better in the moral sense, but has known me a long time and knows that I don't drink. But for some reason the joke from the previous year stuck in his head, and then he got confused and thought that I had really changed my mind about drinking alcohol.
That was all a bit upsetting. I didn't want the stuff, and the person who gave me the gift was embarrassed. He had so gotten it stuck in his head that I wanted real champagne for Christmas that he just thought he'd gotten me the perfect gift and hadn't seriously considered getting me any gift that did not come with a bottle of champagne.
So don't give people alcohol for Christmas. Unless, maybe, they happen to be gourmet cooks and wouldn't actually drink much of the stuff. If you give someone alcohol and they don't want alcohol, that can be embarrassing. And if they really like alcohol, well, how would you feel if someone got hurt?
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I gave alcohol once, and the results were certainly not the best. This gift kept on giving.... (I blogged about it a while ago, and it is buried in my blog for readers who don't recall the tale).
If you want to give alcohol to gourmets, you are probably OK with cooking sherry, which is just for cooking. I don't think champagne is known for its distinctive flavours, and is probably rarely used in cooking. Just a guess.
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